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Review: Batman #705

By | December 18th, 2010
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Written and Illustrated by Tony Daniel

Batman joins forces with a new hero who’s as dangerous as she is beautiful. When members of a secret order turn up dead and tortured in Gotham City’s Chinatown district, I-Ching informs Batman that he fears an ancient relic is the target. Batman connects this case to that of a missing satellite architect. With few clues to go by and the stakes getting higher, Batman races to locate the surviving members of the order before it’s too late.

I didn’t read much of Tony Daniel’s Batman original run, as the first couple of issues didn’t impress me, but I decided to give him a second chance at the beginning of the Batman Inc. era. Follow the jump to see what I thought of the second issue of his homecoming arc.

Last things first: that final page does not make me want to pick up the next issue. I thought that making the Riddler a villain again was a bad idea that was executed in a terribly lazy manner, and I also felt that the introduction of Catgirl was lame and a bit juvenile. Where Daniel appears to be going with this last page seems to be a terrible combination of those two ideas. Please, please don’t do it, Tony.

Moving on to the rest of the issue: the story really isn’t bad so far. It loses a bit of props for being tied to The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul, which should just be forgotten (besides, you know, Ra’s being back), but beyond that, it isn’t so bad. Then again, neither is it great. It’s just another action-packed superhero story, with all of the strengths and weaknesses one would expect from that sort of story. It might be interesting enough to make you turn the page, but it isn’t the sort of story you’ll remember and look back on fondly.

Daniel’s greatest weakness when it comes to writing is his characterization. Throughout this issue (and the one preceding it), Batman acts more like late 90s/early 2000s Tim Drake than Dick Grayson, particularly in his dialogue and internal monologue. It almost seems like Daniel himself noticed this, as he has his new character, The Peacock, remark that “He talks like an adolescent.” Yes, Dick isn’t as serious of a Batman as Bruce was, but he has still been doing this for quite some time, but — as someone who read all of the Nightwing ongoing — I find it horribly grating for Dick to non-ironically call something a “thinga-majighee.”

Tony Daniel has always been a bit of an inconsistent artist, even when you just look at his recent work on Batman. His performance on R.I.P. was stellar, but just an arc earlier he had some truly grotesque issues. Ever since he started doing both the artistic and writing portions of the series, his inconsistency has shifted from arc by arc to issue by issue and is now a matter of page by page. With one page Daniel will be laying down some beautiful pencil work, and when you turn the page you’ll be looking at something quite bothersome to the eye. I want to keep reading his run, but the inconsistent art really hasn’t helped the alright-at-best writing.

Final Verdict: 5.4 – Browse.


Walt Richardson

Walt is a former editor for Multiversity Comics and current podcaster/ne'er-do-well. Follow him on Twitter @goodbyetoashoe... if you dare!

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